Sh'mot notes

Here are a few of my thoughts concerning the first parsha of Exodus (Sh'mot).

Politics, part 1

Okay, let’s start with Rabbi Hertz’s assertion that the new pharaoh (pretended that he) didn’t know Joseph/Yosef because Yosef had worked for the Hyksos, a group of Asiatic conquerors, and the local yokels had regained control of their government.

Essentially, this made Yosef a collaborator, and probably tarred his entire family’s reputation by association, thus creating an excuse for the entire family to suffer collective punishment.

Politics, part 2

It can also be argued that the new Egyptian government’s attitude toward B’nei Yakov (Jacob’s children) was a literally classic case of xenophobia, fear of foreigners. It behooves those of us who are United States citizens to remember that a huge proportion of American Jewry is probably not more than 2-3 generations “off the boat” ourselves, and to give really careful thought to legislation concerning immigration, from which our ancestors and/or we have benefited.

Shifrah and Puah

Now those were two gutsy women. They put their lives on the line by refusing to kill the male Hebrew newborns.

A gruesome thought

“. . . and she saw that he was good (ki tov hu), and she hid him three months.” Parshat Sh’mot, Exodus, chapter 2, verse 2.

What exactly did it mean, in those days, to “see that a child was good”? And if she’d seen that the child wasn’t "good . . .?” Did our ancestors follow the gruesome practice of “exposing” visibly-disabled newborns, abandoning them outdoors to die?

Pharoah’s daughter

Adopting a Hebrew baby boy was a gutsy move, but how did she get away with it?

Miriam

Nice strategy, offering her own and her brother’s mother as his wet nurse. Gutsy, too.

Moses the shepherd

Um, folks, Moshe was raised in a palace. When did he learn to be a shepherd?

Aaron enters the picture

Question A: Just how long was Moshe nursed by his mother, that 1) Moshe actually knew that he had a brother named Aharon, and that 2) Aharon knew that Moshe the Egyptian Prince was actually his brother?

Question B: What kind of slavery was this, that Aharon could just nonchalantly take a few days personal leave to meet his brother in the wilderness?

Haftarat Sh’mot

For Sefardim: Never looked before, and boy, was I surprised—it’s exactly the same as Haftarat Matot. (Full disclosure: I’d be able to spot that one in my sleep—I’ve chanted it almost every year for roughly two decades.)

For Ashkenazim: I said this years ago in a d’var Torah ("word of Torah," Torah discussion) and I’ll say it again—“For with stammering lips and a strange tongue shall it be spoken to this people” describes the speech of a person with a speech impediment. This may be the sort of thing that’s more likely to catch the eye of the mother of a hard-of-hearing child who spent sixteen years in speech therapy.

Aharon is an interpreter for a person with a speech impediment. As often happens, those who interact frequently with a person with a speech impediment eventually learn to understand his/her speech directly. Notice that, by partway through Vaera (next week’s parsha), Moshe is speaking for himself.